5 ms·

New York’s office market is home to the most tech workers: CBRE report

35 points by toomuchtodo 2mo ago

https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026 https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026

dang 2mo ago
Anybody have a link to the report? We can put it in the toptext if so
- PLenz 2mo ago
  https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026 https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026
  - dang 2mo ago
    Added above. Thanks!
- paul7986 2mo ago
  sorta weird you are being downvoted for this comment. Maybe Many know you're an admin?
  - dredmorbius 2mo ago
    Mods often collapse threads (including their own) which are no longer relevant to the discussion.
ramesh31 2mo ago
You just can't live in the Bay anymore, that's all there is to it. It'd be great if you could. But anything within a 2 hour commute requires a minimum of $200k salary to survive, let alone get ahead. Unless you're inheriting your parents house or piling into a roommate situation, it's just completely undoable over the long term. Compare this to NYC which has innumerable options when it comes to suburbs, with better transit, lower taxes, reasonably priced homes, and far greater apartment options. I don't see how SF ends up as anything but a place for raising capital in the future. The (true) middle class tech worker dream is dead and gone there.
- jakeydus 2mo ago
  SF is my favorite city in the world, but as a tech worker in a flyover state I've given up on it being anything but a nice place to visit. I couldn't afford it alone, let alone with my family.
  - jjav 2mo ago
    SF is not Silicon Valley (arguably, depending on your generation, it is not even part of Silicon Valley). Housing it a lot more reasonable (nowhere near cheap, but feasible) in the actual Silicon Valley.
    - jakeydus 2mo ago
      Unfortunately I don't particularly care for SV. I left my heart in San Francisco. I love the fog, the density, the hills, the food, the diversity, the transit, and the ocean. Silicon Valley has some of that, and it's in close enough proximity to be able to work in SF or visit regularly, but my dream is to live in Sunset or Haight-Ashbury in an ancient house and ride my bike around town with my girls. Maybe someday.
- rootsudo 2mo ago
  This, 100%. Seattle is ranked #2 but the cost is ballooning and the environment is very much east coast vs west coast USA. It used to be better, remote I feel is better in Seattle but the hidden costs of being in the Seattle region involve possible commute, car purchase and the general RTA, fragmented neighborhoods, public transit is improving but nothing near what is nyc. Housing… I feel is cheaper in nyc, food across the board is much more inexpensive in much. Hotels are varied and more inexpensive in nyc. One thing I have enjoyed is time zone differences. 3 hours difference is a lot and if you can balance that you can have a wonderful Seattle afternoon. Problem is winter sucks in PNW.
  - shepardrtc 2mo ago
    I lived in Seattle for a couple of years, out in one of the suburbs (West Seattle). I would say that housing cost is the primary issue in Seattle, but its nowhere near San Francisco. Outside of that, public transit is pretty good. I have gone back and forth across the city, to Bellevue, even to Olympia, on public transit very cheaply and within a reasonable amount of time. The light rail recently opened up to Bellevue, though Bellevue is not really all that much cheaper lol. The food didn't feel super expensive, but it definitely wasn't great. San Francisco and NYC are so much better. I have been consistently disappointed with the food in Seattle. The one issue I see with Seattle is that they have a 30% or so vacancy rate for office buildings in downtown. A lot of companies have left, or will be moving. Many to Bellevue. The city decided to target businesses to fund more progressive policies, but with remote work, the businesses just moved across Lake Washington. Or to other states (like Starbucks). I don't see that changing. So now they have a budget deficit, lots of office vacancies, and the looming threat of more companies leaving. Not sure if that'll change it's standing or anything, but its not great.
cyberax 2mo ago
I will keep repeating this and I will keep getting downvoted for that. You can't out-build yourself out of high living costs. The only way to fix this is to start taxing dense office space as if it's toxic waste sites. And promote remote work to re-invigorate smaller cities.
- NewJazz 2mo ago
  We tax toxic waste sites? Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
  - cyberax 2mo ago
    To be more precise, we tax (or cap-and-trade) pollution. For example, sulfur emissions and, in some countries, CO2 emissions. > Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones? Dense offices in downtowns.
gamblor956 2mo ago
...when including government employees and finance workers in the count of tech workers....because they use technology in their jobs. By that definition they use, the leader in "tech" employment is simply the metro with the most employees.
- NewJazz 2mo ago
  You skew toward the most populous city anyway if you use most per city instead of per MSA or per capita.
paxys 2mo ago
It’s a pretty simple explanation. Bay Area does not have much industry outside of tech. New York City is a hub for banking, investing, insurance, government, healthcare, consulting, real estate, fashion, law and more. All of these are now increasingly hiring tech workers directly and also retraining and transitioning their existing workforce to be more technical. So just by numbers alone Bay Area will never maintain a monopoly on tech jobs, especially considering the NYC employment market is several times the size. However if you just filter to the tech sector the numbers will be very different.
miiiiiike 2mo ago
Define "tech". If you're talking about programmers working at non-tech companies? Maybe. If you're talking about people excited about technology, then no. I lived in NYC for a decade. NYC is media and finance. And while I liked the people "in tech" that I met in NYC, the passion for the work just wasn't there enmasse.
xnx 2mo ago
NYC is also 10x the population of San Francisco.
- jerlam 2mo ago
  The article clarifies the comparison is between NYC and the entire San Francisco Bay Area. NYC is around 8.8 million and the Bay is around 7.8 million.
nonameiguess 2mo ago
I'm not sure why this is remarkable. San Francisco is still the overall #1 thanks to whatever this report means by "quality" of talent. It seems some larger city was bound to overtake San Francisco in total quantity eventually. New York Metro has nearly three times the population of the Bay Area. The three-year negative growth for San Francisco (-6%) seems to be the reason here. Obviously, with Hacker News being so heavily populated itself by people living there who love to complain, we're going to see all the comments we're already starting to see citing housing costs as the reason, but San Francisco has had high housing costs for a long time now, and its negative growth is nowhere near the worst on this list. Milwaukee, Columbus, Phoenix all had even greater losses. Do those places have similar housing crises? Seattle is just as bad as San Francisco, isn't it? Yet it saw 13.1% positive growth, one of the largest numbers for an already large city. Toronto is expensive as hell, isn't it? They saw 26.5% growth. What other explanations are possible? Recent layoffs have affected web tech more than other tech, which is highly concentrated in the Bay? They've affected startups more than well-established Fortune 500s, also highly concentrated in the Bay?

35 points by toomuchtodo 2mo ago

https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026 https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026

dang 2mo ago

Anybody have a link to the report? We can put it in the toptext if so

PLenz 2mo ago
https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026 https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026
- dang 2mo ago
  Added above. Thanks!
paul7986 2mo ago
sorta weird you are being downvoted for this comment. Maybe Many know you're an admin?
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  Mods often collapse threads (including their own) which are no longer relevant to the discussion.

ramesh31 2mo ago

You just can't live in the Bay anymore, that's all there is to it. It'd be great if you could. But anything within a 2 hour commute requires a minimum of $200k salary to survive, let alone get ahead. Unless you're inheriting your parents house or piling into a roommate situation, it's just completely undoable over the long term. Compare this to NYC which has innumerable options when it comes to suburbs, with better transit, lower taxes, reasonably priced homes, and far greater apartment options. I don't see how SF ends up as anything but a place for raising capital in the future. The (true) middle class tech worker dream is dead and gone there.

jakeydus 2mo ago
SF is my favorite city in the world, but as a tech worker in a flyover state I've given up on it being anything but a nice place to visit. I couldn't afford it alone, let alone with my family.
- jjav 2mo ago
  SF is not Silicon Valley (arguably, depending on your generation, it is not even part of Silicon Valley). Housing it a lot more reasonable (nowhere near cheap, but feasible) in the actual Silicon Valley.
  - jakeydus 2mo ago
    Unfortunately I don't particularly care for SV. I left my heart in San Francisco. I love the fog, the density, the hills, the food, the diversity, the transit, and the ocean. Silicon Valley has some of that, and it's in close enough proximity to be able to work in SF or visit regularly, but my dream is to live in Sunset or Haight-Ashbury in an ancient house and ride my bike around town with my girls. Maybe someday.
rootsudo 2mo ago
This, 100%. Seattle is ranked #2 but the cost is ballooning and the environment is very much east coast vs west coast USA. It used to be better, remote I feel is better in Seattle but the hidden costs of being in the Seattle region involve possible commute, car purchase and the general RTA, fragmented neighborhoods, public transit is improving but nothing near what is nyc. Housing… I feel is cheaper in nyc, food across the board is much more inexpensive in much. Hotels are varied and more inexpensive in nyc. One thing I have enjoyed is time zone differences. 3 hours difference is a lot and if you can balance that you can have a wonderful Seattle afternoon. Problem is winter sucks in PNW.
- shepardrtc 2mo ago
  I lived in Seattle for a couple of years, out in one of the suburbs (West Seattle). I would say that housing cost is the primary issue in Seattle, but its nowhere near San Francisco. Outside of that, public transit is pretty good. I have gone back and forth across the city, to Bellevue, even to Olympia, on public transit very cheaply and within a reasonable amount of time. The light rail recently opened up to Bellevue, though Bellevue is not really all that much cheaper lol. The food didn't feel super expensive, but it definitely wasn't great. San Francisco and NYC are so much better. I have been consistently disappointed with the food in Seattle. The one issue I see with Seattle is that they have a 30% or so vacancy rate for office buildings in downtown. A lot of companies have left, or will be moving. Many to Bellevue. The city decided to target businesses to fund more progressive policies, but with remote work, the businesses just moved across Lake Washington. Or to other states (like Starbucks). I don't see that changing. So now they have a budget deficit, lots of office vacancies, and the looming threat of more companies leaving. Not sure if that'll change it's standing or anything, but its not great.

cyberax 2mo ago

I will keep repeating this and I will keep getting downvoted for that. You can't out-build yourself out of high living costs. The only way to fix this is to start taxing dense office space as if it's toxic waste sites. And promote remote work to re-invigorate smaller cities.

NewJazz 2mo ago
We tax toxic waste sites? Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones?
- cyberax 2mo ago
  To be more precise, we tax (or cap-and-trade) pollution. For example, sulfur emissions and, in some countries, CO2 emissions. > Also should all work sites be taxed, or just "office" ones? Dense offices in downtowns.

gamblor956 2mo ago

...when including government employees and finance workers in the count of tech workers....because they use technology in their jobs. By that definition they use, the leader in "tech" employment is simply the metro with the most employees.

NewJazz 2mo ago
You skew toward the most populous city anyway if you use most per city instead of per MSA or per capita.

paxys 2mo ago

It’s a pretty simple explanation. Bay Area does not have much industry outside of tech. New York City is a hub for banking, investing, insurance, government, healthcare, consulting, real estate, fashion, law and more. All of these are now increasingly hiring tech workers directly and also retraining and transitioning their existing workforce to be more technical. So just by numbers alone Bay Area will never maintain a monopoly on tech jobs, especially considering the NYC employment market is several times the size. However if you just filter to the tech sector the numbers will be very different.

miiiiiike 2mo ago

Define "tech". If you're talking about programmers working at non-tech companies? Maybe. If you're talking about people excited about technology, then no. I lived in NYC for a decade. NYC is media and finance. And while I liked the people "in tech" that I met in NYC, the passion for the work just wasn't there enmasse.

xnx 2mo ago

NYC is also 10x the population of San Francisco.

jerlam 2mo ago
The article clarifies the comparison is between NYC and the entire San Francisco Bay Area. NYC is around 8.8 million and the Bay is around 7.8 million.

nonameiguess 2mo ago

I'm not sure why this is remarkable. San Francisco is still the overall #1 thanks to whatever this report means by "quality" of talent. It seems some larger city was bound to overtake San Francisco in total quantity eventually. New York Metro has nearly three times the population of the Bay Area. The three-year negative growth for San Francisco (-6%) seems to be the reason here. Obviously, with Hacker News being so heavily populated itself by people living there who love to complain, we're going to see all the comments we're already starting to see citing housing costs as the reason, but San Francisco has had high housing costs for a long time now, and its negative growth is nowhere near the worst on this list. Milwaukee, Columbus, Phoenix all had even greater losses. Do those places have similar housing crises? Seattle is just as bad as San Francisco, isn't it? Yet it saw 13.1% positive growth, one of the largest numbers for an already large city. Toronto is expensive as hell, isn't it? They saw 26.5% growth. What other explanations are possible? Recent layoffs have affected web tech more than other tech, which is highly concentrated in the Bay? They've affected startups more than well-established Fortune 500s, also highly concentrated in the Bay?